Saturday, June 29, 2013

The bigots will stop at nothing (updated)

ProtectMarriage, the sponsors of Proposition 8, filed an emergency petition to the U.S. Supreme Court on Saturday to stop same-sex marriages from continuing in California.The petition says the decision by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to permit weddings starting Friday afternoon was "premature."

It's Justice Kennedy, who of course wrote the majority opinion that struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, who will rule on this petition, as he is responsible for the 9th Circuit Court. Tom Goldstein of SCOTUSblog explains:

The application argues that the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Proposition 8 case is not yet "final," so the stay must remain in place. The Supreme Court ordinarily does not issue its formally binding ruling – known as the "judgment" – in a case from a federal court of appeals until 25 days after it releases its "opinion." Because the Court issued its opinion in the Proposition 8 case on June 26, it would by default not issue the judgment until Monday, July 22. (The 25th day is July 21, a Sunday.) The principal point of that delay is to permit the losing party to prepare and submit a petition for rehearing to the Justices, though such petitions are as a practical matter never granted.

So basically, the bigots behind Prop 8 want more time to prepare to continue to fight for their bigotry, and to "delay the inevitable," as Goldstein writes. In any event, Goldstein thinks this emergency petition will "likely" fail, for a variety of pretty solid reasons.What's clear, though, is that the bigots are desperate, and will stop at nothing. So extreme is their bigotry.

Anti-bullying

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) responded to the Supreme Court's ruling on DOMA by standing up against bullying... of bigots.

My hope is that those of us who believe in the sanctity
and uniqueness of traditional marriage will continue to argue for its
protection in a way that is respectful to the millions of American sons
and daughters who are gay. It is also my hope that those who argue for
the redefinition of marriage to include same-sex marriage will refrain
from assailing the millions of Americans who disagree with them as
bigots.

So there you have a bully begging not to be bullied for being a bigoted bully.

Begging for it

Either the Family Research Council really has no idea what goes on
outside of their nice little 1950s cocoon, or someone in their
marketing department is a genius at coming up with not-so-subtle
Freudian slips.

The myth of objective journalism

The primary difference between Fox News and MSNBC is not ideology; it is that Fox pretends to be objective. Yes, in general, MSNBC does a better job of reporting actual facts and doesn't go out of its way to mislead. But they are both advocacy groups: one for the Republican Party and the other for the Democratic Party. But no one ever claims that MSNBC provides the Truth that the other networks don't want the people to know.

Other than this fact, I have no problem with Fox News. I believe strongly that news organizations should have an explicit political inclination because they all have an implicit inclination. But even worse than that Fox who any reasonable person can see is just GOP-TV, I'm concerned about the middle-of-the-road media outlets. I'm visiting my sister and I just overheard some reporting on the TV from a local station, KTVU. They were covering information about the company that did Edward Snowden's background check. It was anything but objective. The coverage was akin to the coverage of the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg trial.

This has long been a thorn in my side: the idea that centrists are not ideological. They are -- every bit as ideological as those of us on the left and the right. It is just that their ideologies are usually incoherent. Let's think about my favorite centrist example: Nazis. On one side you have the Nazis who want to kill all the Jews, on the other you have people who don't want to harm any Jews, and in the middle you have those who just want to give all Jews life in prison. It's clear than the centrist position is ideological.

Similarly with Edward Snowden, the centrist position that he did something dangerous that put us all in danger is just as ideological as my position that he did the American people a great favor that did not put us in any danger. Matt Taibbi wrote an excellent article yesterday about this issue, "Hey, MSM: All Journalism is Advocacy Journalism." It is basically a defense of Glenn Greenwald.

The NSA and the criminal surveillance of Americans

By Michael J.W. StickingsIn case you missed it, make sure to read "The Criminal N.S.A.," an op-ed in Thursday's Times by Jennifer Stisa Granick and Christopher Jon Sprigman. Their argument is essentially this:

The Fourth Amendment obliges the government to demonstrate probable
cause before conducting invasive surveillance. There is simply no
precedent under the Constitution for the government's seizing such vast
amounts of revealing data on innocent Americans' communications.

The government has made a mockery of that protection by relying on
select Supreme Court cases, decided before the era of the public
Internet and cellphones, to argue that citizens have no expectation of
privacy in either phone metadata or in e-mails or other private
electronic messages that it stores with third parties.

*****

We may never know all the details of the mass surveillance programs, but
we know this: The administration has justified them through abuse of
language, intentional evasion of statutory protections, secret,
unreviewable investigative procedures and constitutional arguments that
make a mockery of the government’s professed concern with protecting
Americans' privacy. It's time to call the N.S.A.'s mass surveillance
programs what they are: criminal.

I haven't written much about it here, but on Twitter I've frequently expressed my opposition to what the NSA is doing, and more broadly to the growth and activities of the national security surveillance state. (I've also expressed my general support for Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden, though my view is really that it's not about them but rather about what they've exposed.)

What I've seen is that some of the most virulent defenders of the NSA and Orwellian America are on the left, where among many support for President Obama trumps all else: Obama can do no wrong, and so what he's doing with respect to continuing Bush-Cheney domestic surveillance, prosecuting whistleblowers, and otherwise waging the so-called war on terror cannot be wrong. Either that, or they don't see anything wrong with mass surveillance of Americans. One expects that sort of thing from the right, but when it comes from the left, particularly when they then attack others on the left for expressing what I and others have been expressing, it's simply grotesque.

I call these people the "surveillance state apologists of the left." And what I often hear from them is that it's all legal, end of story. First, what is legal is not necessarily what is right or just. Slavery used to be legal. What the state does in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is legal, because the legal is simply a code of acceptable and unacceptable behavior enacted by the ruling power. There was a lot that was legal in Nazi Germany that I think we can all agree was unjust. But second, is it really all legal? Not according to Granick and Sprigman, who are right, I think, to call it criminal.

Friday, June 28, 2013

Vimeo of the Day: "Horizons"

If you have ever been in a wide open landscape the most interesting thing isn't necessarily the landscape itself, but what you see coming over the horizon. Growing up in South Dakota the landscape itself can be beautiful at times, but that doesn't compare to what the sky can do, especially at night. Combine that with the landscape, and it makes for great photo opportunities...Bear McCreary (The Walking Dead, Defiance, Battlestar Galactica, etc) once again helped me with some original music for the video. This time he suggested adding vocals to the mix. Brendan McCreary and his band (Young Beautiful in a Hurry) did just that. They came up with "I Forever."

The music is great, too. (For more on Bear McCreary, see here; for more on his brother Brendan and Young Beautiful in a Hurry, see here.) Enjoy.

Immigration reform still unlikely

By Frank Moraes(Ed. note: Well, good for the Senate, or at least for the Democratic majority along with a handful of Republicans. But now it goes to the House, where crazy-ass Republican extremism prevails, where the Republican leadership is divided, with Speaker Boehner barely clinging to power, and where it will likely die. Maybe there's enough establishment Republican support to give Boehner cover, and so maybe the bill can pass with Democratic votes and a few Republicans on board, but it's awfully hard to move anything forward when the majority party is insane, so much so that it won't even support a flawed, Republican-oriented bill that Ronald Reagan would have backed and that includes a pile of throw-ins for conservatives. -- MJWS)I'm sure you've heard that the Senate managed to pass their little immigration reform bill with a vote of 68-32. Let's think about that for a second. That means that 32 of the 46 Republican senators voted against the bill: 70%. This is what passes for a huge bipartisan compromise. And notice: the bill itself is extremely conservative. Bernie Sanders voted for it, but with a great many misgivings. Yet despite giving in on all kinds of issues, the Democrats only managed to get 14 Republicans to vote for it. And these were senators: the more moderate of the congressional Republicans.Now it moves to the House where many of our liberal friends in the pundit world are cautiously optimistic. Somehow, they think that winning 30% Republican support in the Senate will put pressure on the House to pass the bill. Maybe! Stranger things have happened. But Dylan Matthews wrote an article this afternoon that made me think it is highly unlikely, "Immigration Reform Has Passed the Senate. Here's How it Passes the House." In the article, he provided three ways that the immigration reform might make its way through the House.Read more »

After DOMA, the fight for marriage equality moves to the states

Look, I've been married since I was 19. I believe in traditional marriage.

This was, in his lizard-brain reaction, his way of saying that the repeal has no impact on the laws of Florida and its constitutional amendment passed in 2008 banning same-sex marriage.

But Mr. Scott is predicting the next battle for marriage equality. The fact that he is (we assume) happily married doesn't mean anything other than there is connubial bliss in the Scott household, and his marriage doesn't have any bearing on the people next door. Equal rights is not a zero-sum game. Granting marriage equality to a gay couple doesn't take it away from the straight people. (Please don't let's rehash the slippery slope argument of man-on-dog marriages. That will only happen when a dog has the ability to comprehend and accept the terms of a contract. Dogs may rule, but that's not a part of the deal.)

The fact that DOMA is now dead means that states that do not recognize all marriages no longer have much of a leg to stand on in denying spousal benefits when a married couple named Fred and Paul from Massachusetts relocates to Palmetto Bay, Florida. And in a way, Justice Antonin Scalia, in his rant against the ruling, predicted the next shoe to drop. Marriage equality at the state level is coming up next.

Rand Paul thinks dog marriage is next

As you all know, I have major problems with real libertarians -- to a large extent because most of them have a good understanding of the problems of governing and I don't see why they don't recognize their very clear blind spots. But people who claim to be libertarians who don't understand the philosophy and just throw the word around because it sounds cooler than "conservative" are another matter. I hate them.The most prominent pretend libertarian is Rand Paul. This doesn't mean that I don't agree with him from time to time. Hell, I agree with Rick Santorum now and then. One nice thing about real libertarians is that you can usually predict where they stand on any given issue. But not so with Paul. He is anti-abortion, for example. Now I understand that some libertarians are anti-abortion. But I don't get it. A 16-cell zygote has equal human rights to the mother? Really?!But there are many more clear examples. He isn't, for example, in favor of drug legalization -- just cannabis. Now, I'm all for legalizing cannabis. But at this point, the argument isn't the libertarian one that people should be allowed to make their own choices. It is the (true) conservative argument that cannabis is no more dangerous than other legal drugs. At least Paul's father, Ron Paul, acts like a true libertarian in this regard.And now, Rand Paul is making the media rounds to complain about the Supreme Court's overturning the Defense of Marriage Act. He was on Glenn Beck's show (another pretend libertarian) warning that same-sex marriage would lead to polygamy. I actually agree with him that this ought to lead to polygamy. I'm very much a libertarian on this issue: people should be able to enter whatever contracts they want with each other. But Paul brought this up as a note of caution: polygamy is bad.[1] This is clearly not a man who believes that people's lives are their own.

As you may have heard, sometime Republican superstar Chris Christie, the bullying blowhard (and media-friendly) governor of New Jersey, isn't terribly impressed with the Supreme Court for striking down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).The ruling is an "example of judicial supremacy," he said yesterday. "I don't think the ruling was appropriate," he opined. "I think it was wrong."He criticized the justices, or at least five of them, for replacing "the judgment of a Republican Congress and a Democratic president" with "their own judgment," adding: "I thought that Justice Kennedy's opinion was, in many respects, incredibly insulting to those people, 340-some members of Congress who voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, and Bill Clinton."Okay, we already knew Christie was a bigot -- yes, if you're against same-sex marriage, that's what you are, period. But what he showed with these comments is that he's an ignorant fool as well, with little regard for the checks, balances, and the rule of law.Does he really have so little understanding of the Constitution, the history of the Supreme Court, and the concept of judicial review, particularly as established early on with Marbury v. Madison, one of the country's defining cases? This is what, in essence, the U.S. Supreme Court does. It rules on the constitutionality of federal laws, providing a check on the other two branches of government. And what it said on Wednesday is that DOMA is unconstitutional. It had every right to do so. It's in the fucking Constitution.Read more »

Thursday, June 27, 2013

DOMA never had a chance

It's easy to say that the Defense of Marriage Act was doomed from the
outset and that its demise yesterday was inevitable. Passed in the
heat of the election campaign of 1996 and foisted as a knee-jerk
reaction to the possibility that Hawaii was about to legalize same-sex
marriage (this was before the Aloha State was considered an "exotic"
place to be from), it had a relatively short life span; a little under
17 years.

For a while it looked like it was carved in stone. The full weight
of the federal government, in all its intricacies of laws, orders, rules,
and codes, was behind the denial of spousal benefits of marriages
between two people who shared similar genitalia. And once a federal law
is in place, it is very hard to extract the tentacles.

But its doom was ordained by its own existence. Born in a fit of
pique and panic, it begged for states to pass marriage equality, or at
the very least civil unions, and once they did, DOMA -- an assault on the
Equal Protection clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments anyway -- became moot. Equal rights to married couples granted by states such as
Massachusetts or New York were being denied by the federal government,
and that put DOMA on the path to invalidation.

What is especially ironic is that all of the arguments against DOMA
are deeply conservative and traditional right wing talking points,
ranging from big government intrusion into the lives of citizens to the
hatred of the Internal Revenue Service and its big-footing of the tax
code. The plaintiff in the case that brought DOMA to the Supreme Court
wasn’t looking for the federal government to bless her wedding; she
wanted to be treated fairly by the tax collector. How hard is that for a
Republican to understand and sympathize with?

From the day DOMA was signed into law by President Clinton (who must
acknowledge his own chutzpah for championing the ruling yesterday), I
believed it would be thrown out. That does not lessen the joy and
satisfaction that I left yesterday morning when the ruling came down. If anything, it affirms my belief in the law and the inevitability of
marriage equality, even if I am still single. (Hope springs eternal.)

And we are one step closer to putting an end to an adjective-enhanced
society, such as "gay marriage" or "lesbian couple." We're just
people.

Can we stop calling them "gay" now?

With the expected addition of California’s citizens after Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling, some 30 percent of Americans will live in states offering same-sex marriage.

Now the two sides of the marriage wars are gearing up to resume the costly state-by-state battles that could, in the hopes of each, spread marriage equality to several more states in the next few years, or reveal a brick wall of traditional values that cannot be breached.

There is wide agreement from both sides on where the next battlefields will be.

I want to point out something that has gone unnoticed in the coverage of these decisions. While I could not be happier that there is an overt acknowledgement by the SCOTUS that gay people are as human as I am, I’m disheartened by the time it took to get here. We still have a long way to go.

DoMA was passed in 1996. It is now nearly twenty years later that the Court has overturned key provisions of the Act. Keep that in mind as the focus shifts to the states, not just on this issue but on abortion.

It’s hard to believe in the 21st century that we’re still battling for individual sovereignty, for the individual’s right to live life unmolested by antediluvian mores and customs of other people who happen to have a megaphone.

And don’t think the right wing is going to go quietly on any of these issues. Same article:

The opponents of same-sex marriage, while unhappy that the Supreme Court struck down a key part of the Defense of Marriage Act and opened the door to gay marriage in California, are taking heart that the court did not declare same-sex marriage a constitutional right.

After a recent succession of stinging defeats in Delaware, Maryland, Maine, Minnesota, Rhode Island and Washington State — after political campaigns in which they were heavily outspent — the groups have also vowed to step up fund-raising for advertising and mobilizing supporters.

“These court decisions could be a real boon to our fund-raising,” said Frank Schubert, a conservative political consultant and vice president of the National Organization for Marriage. “People tend to react when the wolf is at the door.”

And this isn’t nearly as big an issue as a women’s right to choose. After all, one has merely to look at the heroic efforts of Texas state senator Wendy Davis the other evening, and the concomitant reaction of Hair-for Brains governor Rick Perry, his lieutenant governor David “Do The” Dewhurst, and state senator….ummmmm…uhhhhhh….I forgot. Oops!

That it took DoMA, a prima facie unconstitutional law, three decades to be overturned means we have to double down to protect the rights we supposedly cherish, particularly in this day and age when we’ve given so many of them away for free.

Environmentalism good for economy right now

I'm glad to see that Obama made his big speech
and that he is now going to take executive action on climate change. I
do, however, wonder why it took so long. The standard answer is that the
president can only do so many things at once. While that is certainly
true of me, I don't think it applies to him. He has an enormous staff.
He could hire more people if he needed. Why didn't he, on day one, tell
some people, "Put together a report on what we can do on climate
change." That would have taken 4 seconds. Or six if he had added, "Make
it so." But it's all good and I am eager to see what actually gets done.
A big part of it will depend upon the Senate getting past the
Republican filibuster machine.

As I've been arguing for the last four years, now is the time to clean
up the environment. Conservatives (and sadly, many liberals) claim that
we can't do that because it will hurt the economy. That seems like a
logical complaint. But the situation is exactly the opposite. Right now,
we have a huge amount of unused capacity. There are lots of people
sitting around because they can't find jobs. Corporations are sitting on
piles of money they can't find uses for. Now is the time to require
companies to become energy efficient. If we wait until the economy is
booming, then such regulations really will hurt the economy.

But you see, when conservatives claim that environmental regulations
will hurt the economy, what they mean is that it will hurt corporate
profits. And that's true. But keeping corporate profits high is not the
business of the government. That's especially true when unemployment is
high. Pollution is what economists call an externality. All of us pay
part of the production costs of a polluting company through reduced
quality of life (and often also quantity of life).

All economists agree that externalities are bad. They distort markets.
Let me give you an example. Suppose you are making a dress at home.
After you are done, there is a lot of trash: paper, thread, cloth. If
you clean this up it will cost you time, thus increasing the cost of the
dress. Or you could just throw it all on the floor. That wouldn't cost
you any time, but it would make your house messy, which would harm
everyone in the house. By "polluting" the house with your trash, you've
just made your housemates pay for part of the cost of your dress, even
though they get none of the benefits.

Glenn Greenwald is a pornographer!

It looks like a couple of newspapers are interested in Glenn Greenwald's
past. In particular, they want to know about his history as a
pornographer. This is the kind of thing that makes me want to say, "You
can't make this stuff up." But that's not true. This is exactly the kind
of thing that I write: the intrepid journalist breaks a major story and
all anyone cares about is the fact that he once was co-owner of a
business that distributed adult movies. If I wrote it, I would set it in
the future where pornography was illegal to set up the tragicomic
ending where a prostitute is lionized for murdering him to get money for
a fix.Anyway, the whole thing is nonsense. I am an admirer of Glenn Greenwald
and regardless of anything else, I am grateful to Edward Snowden for the
revelations. But when did this story become about them? There is a real
story that few in the media seem particularly interested in. Maybe it
is just that it's a lot easier to dig into Greenwald's decades-old business dealings or Snowden's chatroom musings
about the gold standard. Looking into the NSA is hard. Of course,
that's why people should be so grateful to Greenwald and Snowden.In another Greenwald column, he discussed the Espionage Act.
That law goes back to the bad days of World War I. It was what Oliver
Wendell Holmes was defending when he said that one couldn't shout "fire
in a crowded theater." That law was never about espionage and always
about silencing critics of United States foreign policy.I hadn't given it too much thought, but it is remarkable that until
Obama -- over 91 years -- the Espionage Act had only been used three times
total and in the last 4+ years, Obama has used it 7 times. I've heard
the stat before, of course. But given that I didn't have much hope for
Obama anyway, I didn't think much about it. But it is important to put
this into context. James Goodale recently said, "President Obama will
surely pass President Richard Nixon as the worst president ever on
issues of national security and press freedom." Obama might want to
think about that. In the long run, his great legacy may not be Obamacare
but rather a major move backwards in government transparency and
individual privacy.It seems to me that the forces of darkness are winning. I'm sure that to
some extent, this is just an indication of my frame of mind. But it
does seem that Obama is winning in those areas where he is wrong and the
conservatives are winning in all the other areas. I will not give up
the fight, but it weighs heavily on me. And the consolation prizes like
same-sex marriage aren't nearly enough.(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

SCOTUS rulings on DOMA and Prop 8: A great day for gay rights, equality, and America's noblest ideals

Well, a really good, and potentially historic, day for gay rights, equality, and the ideals to which America professes to aspire.— Michael Stickings (@mjwstickings) June 26, 2013

No, not a perfect day in these terms:-- SCOTUS's Prop 8 ruling was based on standing, not on the merits of the case, and so not in and of itself a validation of same-sex marriage. The lower court ruling against Prop 8 stands, meaning that same-sex marriage is now legal in California, but this has no impact on other states.-- SCOTUS did find the odious DOMA unconstitutional in that it violates the Fifth Amendment, and this is a much greater victory, but state laws against same-sex marriage remain in place and states are not required to recognize same-sex marriages from other states.The hope is that the argument against DOMA -- "deprivation of the liberty of the person protected by the Fifth Amendment," Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority -- ultimately applies in some form to states as well.But here's also a sense that the Roberts Court as currently constituted may simply want to move on from this. It didn't block progress, and didn't pull a Dred Scott (issuing a terrible ruling that will be widely ridiculed in future). It struck down a federal law as many lower courts had done, and it stayed out, more or less, of a state matter. Sure, we know where Scalia, Alito, and Thomas stand on the matter, but as a whole SCOTUS, perhaps rather predictably, fell short of making a sweeping decision and sent the matter back to the states to deal with. Which is to say, it took a generally conservative view of federalism and waved progress along without interfering too much, nudging it back on the right track.In any event, these two rulings add up to a major, historic victory for same-sex marriage and, more broadly, as I tweeted, for the ideals to which America professes to aspire.With so much of the political landscape dominated by Republican extremism, obstructionism, and scandalmongering, with so little being done to address America's problems (including its culture of rampant gun violence), with President Obama pushing an old-fashioned moderate Republican agenda instead of progressive change (we can believe in), and with so much recent attention on the NSA and the growing surveillance state, and the erosion of civil liberties that that entails, I must say I had lost a great deal of whatever hope and optimism I had left, which wasn't much but still something to cling to.No, the world didn't change yesterday, but for once things seemed to get a whole lot better.**********Here, from TPM via Mustang Bobby, is the day, a great day, in 100 seconds:

The Supreme Court's obliteration of the Voting Rights Act spurs the Republican assault on voting rights

By Michael J.W. StickingsIf you care about democracy, and equality, and fairness, and justice, if you're just a good and decent person who cares about your fellow human beings and think that they, like you, should be treated with respect and dignity, that their voice, like yours, matters and should be heard, then this is one of the scariest political headlines you'll ever encounter:

And what Republicans are planning, along the lines of what they've been doing, is pretty scary shit too:

Across the South, Republicans are working to take advantage of a new
political landscape after a divided U.S. Supreme Court freed all or part
of 15 states, many of them in the old Confederacy, from having to ask
Washington's permission before changing election procedures in
jurisdictions with histories of discrimination.

After the high court announced its momentous ruling Tuesday,
officials in Texas and Mississippi pledged to immediately implement laws
requiring voters to show photo identification before getting a ballot.
North Carolina Republicans promised they would quickly try to adopt a
similar law. Florida now appears free to set its early voting hours
however Gov. Rick Scott and the GOP Legislature please. And Georgia's
most populous county likely will use county commission districts that
Republican state legislators drew over the objections of local
Democrats.

Voting rights, thy days are numbered. Except, of course, for those enjoyed by privileged Republicans.

But here, here we have a bona fide filibuster that actually accomplished what it set out to do: to establish a firewall for a basic human right, the right to decide what to do with one's own body.

You want to weed out the nonsense "filibusters" just being done to screw with the Democratic agenda? Force Senators who oppose a bill to stand their asses up and start talking about why. Passionate filibusters have a time honored place in American culture, not just in politics. Americans respect, even if they ultimately don't agree with, someone who has strong and deep feelings about something.

Your mealy-mouthed, status quo-centric pass on the whole issue of filibuster reform was ludicrous. It's not about what happens when Republicans take back power (if not them, then someone).

It's about believing in your cause. It's about knowing that the legislation you bring to bear is important enough to withstand tactical attacks like a filibuster.

It's about, in the end, honesty. Honesty is a quality you seem to minimize as much as you minimize Rand Paul's rage.

Are we not men?

I'd hate to make anyone think I'm an optimist. I'm not even sure I care too much about the human race aside from a few individuals, but that's what pessimism is about -- a cosmic frame of reference that sees no permanence, that sees everything that is on the way up as inevitably on the way down.Perhaps not caring gives a clearer vision. If it doesn't matter in the end that voting rights are in peril, or at least under continuing assault, then the failure of the Texas legislature to pass a bill further restricting abortion rights despite a ten-hour filibuster by Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis is less likely to be overshadowed. She might have gone on but was ruled to have drifted off topic amidst a chorus of boos and catcalls, and the bill was declared dead at 3 am. For those of us who still hope for sweeping reformation and the triumph of truth and justice for all, it's a little and perhaps temporary victory over the animal meanness of human nature and as Dr. Moreau learned, you can dress up the animal and teach it to walk on two legs, you can make it recite pledges and formulae, you can make up stories about divine origins, but the beast is still a beast and evolution is so slow.(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

By Michael J.W. StickingsLet's not make too much of this.Snowden may very well be in a transit zone at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport that lies beyond Russian sovereignty, and so it's not clear what Putin could do.But let's face it, he's an authoritarian with little respect for the rule of law, other than his own law, and so he could no doubt make things difficult for Snowden, not least by bowing to American pressure to send him back home to face "justice" (i.e., injustice).But that's not Putin, giving in to such demands -- not when he can take the occasion to give America the finger:

In his first public comments on the case, Mr. Putin said that Mr.
Snowden — the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked
documents about American surveillance programs — had committed no crime
on Russian soil and was "a free man" who could choose his own
destination. "We can only extradite some foreign nationals to the
countries with which we have the relevant international agreements on
extradition," he added. "With the United States, we have no such
agreement."

Giving America the other one as well, a gleeful double bird, he added that Snowden sees himself as a "human rights activist" who "struggles for freedom of information" and, just to drive home the point, indicated that the U.S. is being hypocritical in going after a dissenter, the implication being that the U.S. shouldn't complain when he does the same, which, of course, he often does (e.g., Pussy Riot).

What fun.

Here's Putin the Autocrat standing behind a facade of legal niceties while sticking it to the U.S. -- at a time when he's facing growing international pressure, particularly from the U.S. and its G8 partners, over his support for the Assad regime in Syria. For a time, I was wondering if there was a deal to be made: I'll give you Snowden if you lay off Syria. But now it just looks like he's taking great pleasure making the U.S. look inept and ridiculous and desperate.

Let me be clear: I'm no fan of Vladimir Putin. I loathe him, in fact.

But even if it's all part of his self-serving agenda, he's doing the right thing with Snowden, letting a free man facing persecution look for a new home.

And hopefully Snowden will find what he's looking for, with Putin's admirable restraint helping him get there.

A blow for bigotry: The Supreme Court demolishes the Voting Rights Act

By Michael J.W. StickingsAs you may have heard by now, the Supreme Court -- or, rather, the Supreme Court's right-wing majority, issued a ruling today that significantly undermines the efficacy of the Voting Rights Act:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday effectively struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by a 5-to-4 vote, ruling that Congress had not provided adequate justification for subjecting nine states, mostly in the South, to federal oversight.

"In 1965, the states could be divided into two groups: those with a recent history of voting tests and low voter registration and turnout, and those without those characteristics," Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority. "Congress based its coverage formula on that distinction. Today the nation is no longer divided along those lines, yet the Voting Rights Act continues to treat it as if it were."

The court divided along ideological lines, and the two sides drew sharply different lessons from the history of the civil rights movement and gave very different accounts of whether racial minorities continue to face discrimination in voting.

There was -- and remains -- good reason for such federal oversight.

What the Roberts-led majority is basically saying is that racial prejudice is a thing of the past ("the nation is no longer divided along those lines") and that the success in overcoming such prejudice means there's no longer a need for voting rights protections of the sort that were enacted back in the '60s as part of the broader civil rights movement.

Which is ridiculous.

Conservatives have been waging war on voting rights for a long time, by which I mean forever, and this is the blow they were waiting to strike.

Sauce for the gander

It turns out the I.R.S. was looking at just about everybody’s “social welfare group” application.

An internal IRS document obtained by The Associated Press said that besides “tea party,” lists used by screeners to pick groups for close examination also included the terms “Israel,” ”Progressive” and “Occupy.” The document said an investigation into why specific terms were included was still underway.

In a conference call with reporters, Danny Werfel said that after becoming acting IRS chief last month, he discovered wide-ranging and improper terms on the lists and said screeners were still using them. He did not specify what terms were on the lists, but said he suspended the use of all such lists immediately.

“There was a wide-ranging set of categories and cases that spanned a broad spectrum” on the lists, Werfel said. He added that his aides found those lists contained “inappropriate criteria that was in use.”

Werfel’s comments suggest the IRS may have been targeting groups other than tea party and other conservative organizations for tough examinations to see if they qualify. The agency has been under fire since last month for targeting those groups.

So, can we expect to see a trail of liberals come before Congress to tell heart-wrenching stories about how they were persecuted in the same fashion of the tales of woe by the Tea Party?

Aaron Hernandez and the American Way: A tale of murder, media, guns, race, class, and the NFL

By Michael J.W. StickingsMy apologies for being away from blogging most of the past few weeks, and, once more, a huge thanks to Richard and my great co-bloggers for filling in. For a variety of reasons, including kids, work, and a busted computer, I've been doing my writing, such as it is, almost exclusively at that wonderful and dysfunctional place called Twitter (you can find me here).But I'm back, refreshed and, while still intending to tweet a lot, eager to get back to more serious writing.I'll take it slowly today, though, with a post on the current crime sensation involving a certain tight end for the New England Patriots...**********

By now, you've surely heard about the ongoing police investigation of the murder of Odin Lloyd, if only because it involves a sports celebrity, football player Aaron Hernandez. (Whether you have or haven't, Time has a helpful guide here.)With the police searching for evidence, there's been a ton of speculation in the media, with reports that charges were going to be filed turning out, so far, to be untrue -- and, predictably, Hernandez's lawyer has attacked the media for what he called "false reports." Basically, we don't know anything, or at least not nearly enough to have much of a clue. Maybe Hernandez did something, maybe not, but it's not even clear what that something might be -- obstruction of justice? more and worse? It's just too early to say.Follow the story if you like, and however you like. The sensation-obsessed media are all over it -- you know how much they like (feed off of) the intersection of crime and celebrity.But step back a moment. There's more going on here than you might think. Because it's not just about the crime and the celebrity, it's what this whole episode tells us about... well, pretty much everything. And for that, there's no better person to turn to than Charles Pierce, who in a piece at Grantlandyesterday was as brilliant as ever, shining his flashlight on the sordid underbelly of the whole damn thing -- the bloodthirsty media, the bloodthirsty gun culture, the bloodthirsty pro sports industry, and pretty much the degradation of American civilization as we know it.Read more »

Greedy bastards

Chris Kluwe, the former placekicker for the Minnesota Vikings, is also a very good writer. In his new book Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies, excerpted in Salon, he takes on Ayn Rand and libertarians.

So I forced myself to read “Atlas Shrugged.” Apparently I harbor masochistic tendencies; it was a long, hard slog, and by the end I felt as if Ayn Rand had violently beaten me about the head and shoulders with words. I feel I would be doing all of you a disservice (especially those who think Rand is really super-duper awesome) if I didn’t share some thoughts on this weighty tome.

Who is John Galt?

John Galt (as written in said novel) is a deeply flawed, sociopathic ideal of the perfect human. John Galt does not recognize the societal structure surrounding him that allows him to exist. John Galt, to be frank, is a turd.

However, John Galt is also very close to greatness. The only thing he is missing, the only thing Ayn Rand forgot to take into account when writing “Atlas Shrugged,” is empathy.

John Galt talks about intelligence and education without discussing who will pay for the schools, who will teach the teachers. John Galt has no thought for his children, or their children, or what kind of world they will have to occupy when the mines run out and the streams dry up. John Galt expects an army to protect him but has no concern about how it’s funded or staffed. John Galt spends his time in a valley where no disasters occur, no accidents happen, and no real life takes place.

John Galt lives in a giant fantasy that’s no different from an idealistic communist paradise or an anarchist’s playground or a capitalist utopia. His world is flat and two-dimensional. His world is not real, and that is the huge, glaring flaw with objectivism.

John Galt does not live in reality.

In reality, hurricanes hit coastlines, earthquakes knock down buildings, people crash cars or trip over rocks or get sick and miss work. In reality, humans make good choices and bad choices based on forces even they sometimes don’t understand. To live with other human beings, to live in society, requires that we understand that shit happens and sometimes people need a safety net. Empathy teaches us that contributing to this safety net is beneficial for all, because we never know when it will be our turn.

Just wandering

It seems as though Edward Snowden, the NSA “whistleblower” who has secreted documents to Glenn Greenwald in exchange for his moment in the spotlight, has decided the spotlight was too harsh for him. He has left Hong Kong for parts unknown.

The best guesses are that he is in Russia and looking for asylum in Ecuador. Russia refused to extradite him, probably because the United States had nothing to offer in exchange, and Snowden has far more valuable intelligence to give up in exchange for the cooperation of Russian authorities. Iceland threw up roadblocks to his asylum request, which scared him off it seems.

One thing seems pretty clear from events over the weekend: there are a lot of people very angry at Edward Snowden, people he believed would embrace him with open arms and wallets. Hong Kong authorities, no doubt with significant input from the Beijing government, all but expelled him over the weekend, after he revealed American attempts to hack the Chinese and Hong Konese government. He's a hot potato and no one will want to be left holding him.

Awaiting the Court

As I said this time last week, today could be the day the Supreme Court hands down its rulings on the Defense of Marriage Act and Prop 8. It could also be the day that it rules on the Voting Rights Act and Affirmative Action.

It would be stunning if the Court were to hand down all four rulings at once, and, to top it all off, we are mindful of the news from South Africa on the condition of Nelson Mandela, a person whose legacy is in no small way related to the questions of freedom and equality that are being considered by the Court.

A.M. Headlines

(Washington Post): "Russia says it has no authority to expel Snowden; Kerry: 'deeply troubling'"(Politico): "On Snowden's trip, no good options for Obama"(New York Times): "Offering Snowden aid, WikiLeaks gets back in the game"(The Hill): "Support snowballs ahead of Senate vote on immigration bill"(Slate): "Supreme Court 2013" The year in review"